GIT pack format
===============
= pack-*.pack files have the following format:
- A header appears at the beginning and consists of the following:
4-byte signature:
The signature is: {'P', 'A', 'C', 'K'}
4-byte version number (network byte order):
GIT currently accepts version number 2 or 3 but
generates version 2 only.
4-byte number of objects contained in the pack (network byte order)
Observation: we cannot have more than 4G versions ;-) and
more than 4G objects in a pack.
- The header is followed by number of object entries, each of
which looks like this:
(undeltified representation)
n-byte type and length (3-bit type, (n-1)*7+4-bit length)
compressed data
(deltified representation)
n-byte type and length (3-bit type, (n-1)*7+4-bit length)
20-byte base object name
compressed delta data
Observation: length of each object is encoded in a variable
length format and is not constrained to 32-bit or anything.
- The trailer records 20-byte SHA1 checksum of all of the above.
= Original (version 1) pack-*.idx files have the following format:
- The header consists of 256 4-byte network byte order
integers. N-th entry of this table records the number of
objects in the corresponding pack, the first byte of whose
object name is less than or equal to N. This is called the
'first-level fan-out' table.
- The header is followed by sorted 24-byte entries, one entry
per object in the pack. Each entry is:
4-byte network byte order integer, recording where the
object is stored in the packfile as the offset from the
beginning.
20-byte object name.
- The file is concluded with a trailer:
A copy of the 20-byte SHA1 checksum at the end of
corresponding packfile.
20-byte SHA1-checksum of all of the above.
Pack Idx file:
-- +--------------------------------+
fanout | fanout[0] = 2 (for example) |-.
table +--------------------------------+ |
| fanout[1] | |
+--------------------------------+ |
| fanout[2] | |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| fanout[255] = total objects |---.
-- +--------------------------------+ | |
main | offset | | |
index | object name 00XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX | | |
table +--------------------------------+ | |
| offset | | |
| object name 00XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX | | |
+--------------------------------+= 2 adding 2^7 + 2^14 + ... + 2^(7*(n-1))
to the result.
= Version 2 pack-*.idx files support packs larger than 4 GiB, and
have some other reorganizations. They have the format:
- A 4-byte magic number '\377tOc' which is an unreasonable
fanout[0] value.
- A 4-byte version number (= 2)
- A 256-entry fan-out table just like v1.
- A table of sorted 20-byte SHA1 object names. These are
packed together without offset values to reduce the cache
footprint of the binary search for a specific object name.
- A table of 4-byte CRC32 values of the packed object data.
This is new in v2 so compressed data can be copied directly
from pack to pack during repacking without undetected
data corruption.
- A table of 4-byte offset values (in network byte order).
These are usually 31-bit pack file offsets, but large
offsets are encoded as an index into the next table with
the msbit set.
- A table of 8-byte offset entries (empty for pack files less
than 2 GiB). Pack files are organized with heavily used
objects toward the front, so most object references should
not need to refer to this table.
- The same trailer as a v1 pack file:
A copy of the 20-byte SHA1 checksum at the end of
corresponding packfile.
20-byte SHA1-checksum of all of the above.